


Blue Nail Polish

by reckingstacks



Series: Dusk & Dawn [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Date Night, M/M, in which taako has issues and kravitz voices concerns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-29 00:29:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8468845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reckingstacks/pseuds/reckingstacks
Summary: They're crossing the courtyard in the centre of the base again, after another evening spent drinking and swearing over a lump of clay. Despite it being the height of summer, and the thick glass that sits between them and the open sky, the altitude still saps all of the heat out of the air. Taako is chilly; Kravitz is not. He never notices the cold any more.





	

It's been several months since the first kind-of-date at the Chug-N-Squeeze, and the workshops have become almost routine for them. They drink, they make pottery of varying quality. Kravitz vents to Taako about the stresses of being an overworked ethereal reaper of souls. Taako vents to Kravitz about how boring training is or whatever weird shit is happening at the Bureau base. It's therapeutic for the both of them; Taako finds it refreshing to speak with someone who isn't a Bureau employee for once, and Kravitz finds comfort in being able to pretend for a couple of hours that his life is normal, like everybody else's.

Kravitz is certain they count as an item, now. Taako kissed him for the first time on the night of the second workshop, and every night since, and this is the sixth one they've attended together. It leaves him feeling giddy every time.

But lately, he can't help but feel like things have... stagnated. Taako was the one who initiated all of this, who calls him every few weeks to invite him out again, who always yanks him down to eye level for that goodbye kiss. But he doesn't linger on his lips, hasn't made any further moves, and he hardly seems to bat an eyelid when Kravitz tells him he has to leave. Perhaps it's just how he is - casual, nonchalant, and impossible to read - but the mixed signals Kravitz has been getting are starting to cloud his mind.

He's been kicking around long enough to know that the only way to clear all of this up is to confront it head-on.

They're crossing the courtyard in the centre of the base again, after another evening spent drinking and swearing over a lump of clay. Despite it being the height of summer, and the thick glass that sits between them and the open sky, the altitude still saps all of the heat out of the air. Taako is chilly; Kravitz is not. He never notices the cold any more.

"I guess you want to get going, huh?" Taako stops, turns to face him, gives him a lopsided sort of smile and runs his hands up his arms. "Things to do, souls to collect, death queens to appease and all that fun shit."

He pulls Kravitz down for a kiss, and Kravitz lets him, closing his eyes and simply savouring the moment.

"Have fun at work, handsome. I'll see you again in a couple weeks." And he lets Kravitz go and turns to leave.

"Taako." Kravitz falters, and Taako stops, glancing back over his shoulder.

"Hmm?"

"There's... there's something-- I--" The words evade him, as they so often do when it comes to Taako. It's hard to know what to say to someone so blunt and blasé and yet seemingly indifferent to the state of their relationship.

"I want to ask you something," Kravitz says finally. It buys him a few more seconds to get his thoughts in order, at least.

"What?"

Taako has turned to face him, now. Silence hangs between them for a moment.

"Do you see this going anywhere? Us, I mean." Kravitz steps forward and tentatively takes Taako's hand in his own; long, dark, bony fingers contrasting with Taako's smaller, paler, softer ones. His nails are painted a brilliant sapphire blue.

"Why?" Taako's voice is as level and unreadable as ever. "Don't you?"

"It's not that." Kravitz shakes his head, still focused more on how Taako's nails glimmer in the moonlight than on his face. "But..." He trails off, cracks a smile, laughs weakly because he doesn't know what else to do. "You're so hard to read, sometimes, you know that? I don't know what you want out of any of this. Sometimes you're so... forward, and then, the next minute, it's like you couldn't care less. I don't understand you. Sometimes it feels like you're almost expecting me to walk away."

There's that silence again as Taako contemplates what he just heard. His thumb rubs across the back of Kravitz' hand. It's ice cold, like it always is, seeming to draw all the heat right out of him. Kravitz' words have stirred an uncomfortable revelation in him.

"Maybe it's because I am." The frank honesty catches Kravitz off-guard, his eyes going wide as his gaze meets Taako's.

"Sorry," he says, a hint of a sad smile playing on his lips. "Look, Kravitz - it's not you. It's not personal. It's really, really not. It's just something I picked up when I was younger. I was always on the move, right? I didn't have a permanent home, and I was living with a whole new band of people practically every month. People came and went constantly. I learnt to stop getting too attached, because I couldn't afford to. Life wasn't going to fucking wait for me while I pined over people."

"Oh. That's... oh." Kravitz bites the corner of his lip. He feels guilty. It just sounds so... sad. "I'm sorry."

"What? No, don't be." Taako finally pulls his hand free of Kravitz' grasp and nudges him playfully. "Listen, babe, I won't pretend like it didn't fucking suck sometimes, because it totally, _totally_ did. But I don't want it to get to you, too." He lays his hand on Kravitz' arm, and looks straight into his eyes, looking far more serious and tuned-in than Kravitz thinks he's ever seen him before, especially given he's downed most of a bottle of wine over the course of the evening. "It's a subconscious thing - I forget that not everyone is going to be out of my life in a matter of weeks. I didn't even realise it was that obvious. I'm sorry."

When Kravitz still looks worried and uncertain, Taako places both hands on his hips and draws him in a little closer. Kravitz, unsure of what to do with his hands, eventually lets them come to rest on Taako's shoulders.

"Don't think for a goddamn _second_ that I don't care," Taako murmurs. He can feel his heart beating harder; genuine tenderness and emotional depth are not things he's used to sharing, and it's making him a little nervous, but Kravitz has a point. It's just kind of embarrassing, how the air of apathy and detachment he's spent so long cultivating to protect himself had come so close to driving a wedge in one of the most meaningful relationships of his life, though in true Taako style, he doesn't let on that it's knocked his pride. "I do. Let me tell you that right now: I care. I want you here, if you want to be here."

"I do," Kravitz answers, the words out of his mouth before he can even register them. "I do want to be here."

"Good - because I wasn't planning on letting you go any time soon." Taako's face splits into a wide grin. "You know, for an immortal embodiment of death, you can be a real nervous Nelly."

"That's your fault. I've never met anyone quite like you, Taako. You really are something else, I hope you know that."

"I'll take that as a compliment, my dude." Taako scoffs and quickly pecks him on the lips. "Now, lemme go. I'm already cold as fuck, and this whole _situation_ \--" he nods at the close contact between himself and Kravitz, "--is not helping. I'm pretty sure I can hear my bed calling from here."

"Uh huh." Kravitz chuckles, leans in to kiss him one more time, then finally lets him go and steps back. The flesh seems to melt from his hand to reveal stark, white bone, and his scythe swirls into existence; he swings it through the air, and spacetime itself rips apart, leaving an unnatural gaping hole hanging in mid-air. "Goodnight, Taako. Stay safe. I'll see you soon."

"Kravitz?"

"Hmm?" Kravitz stops, halfway to stepping into the portal.

_Go on. Say it. Don't think about it, you idiot, just do it._

"I love you."

Even through the wine-induced haze fogging his mind, Taako notices the way Kravitz' eyes flash wider for the briefest of moments.

"I love you, too, Taako," he answers after a second. His voice is so soft that it makes Taako's heart flutter. With a smile and one final wave, Kravitz slips through the rift, and it crumples into a pinpoint and vanishes.

Taako stands still for several seconds, staring at the spot where the rift had been just moments ago. Then he laughs to himself, each exhale condensing into a cloud thanks to the chilly night air, and he rakes a hand through his hair. He's cold, and drunk, and so in love, and so, so _alive_ , and for a while, he just stands there, staring up into the inky, star-flecked sky, basking in sheer euphoria.

Eventually, though, the cold gets to him. With a little shiver, he closes the rest of the short distance between himself and the door to their living quarters. He reaches for the handle. The twinkling reflection of the stars in the sky create galaxies on the surface of his nails.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first of a whole bunch of fics that I'm tentatively grouping together under the series name Dusk & Dawn. Plenty more where this came from, folks. thanx 4 reading, find me on tumblr @ reckingstacks


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